Monday, February 29, 2016

February Expenses

Although a short month, February was great for keeping expenses down! Overall, I only spent about 2/3rds of my budget! Primarily this is due to having boondocked quite a bit. Staying free on public land saves a slug on camping expense, plus you tend to prepare meals rather than go out AND you don't move as much so fuel costs are lower. Here are a few highlights:

CAMPING:
I felt like I splurged a couple of times but since I boondocked more than half the month, I only spent $221 of my $525 budget! In fact, I have averaged only $7.35 per day in camping fees!

FUEL:
I budget $533 for fuel but only spent $156 in February. This is due to staying put more due to boondocking but also because of low diesel fuel prices. I think I paid under $2 a gallon all month long.

FOOD:
Even though I dined out a number of times, I ate "at home" a lot more. Of the $342 I spent on food, $148 was on dining out and the remainder ($194) was on groceries.

UTILITIES:
My only utilities are my phone/data and it's my only category where I am over budget Frankly, you can never have enough data! I have a Verizon plan with 21 gigs and I seem to burn through it all too quickly. So, after doing some research, I snagged a T-Mobile plan with "unlimited" data. By unlimited they mean roughly 25 gigs of data per month. There were some overage costs for Verizon this month and some initial costs to set up T-Mobile but going forward I hope to be at about $280 per month.